2017 Stark-Condé Cabernet Sauvignon Stellenbosch South Africa 750 ml

We don’t spend half our year out on the wine trail looking for the ordinary. We’re looking for the outliers, and no bottle deserves that title more than the 2017 Stark-Condé Cabernet Sauvignon Stellenbosch South Africa. The powerful and polished Cabernet boasts a 96-point score from Decanter magazine, which puts it right alongside—are you sitting down?—Ornellaia, Joseph Phelps Insignia, and Bordeaux First Growth Château Mouton Rothschild. And it’s just $24.

This $24 Cabernet sits in the stratosphere because it shows exactly what we want to see in every bottle of superb Cabernet, no matter the price: the rich and dark crushed-berry aromas beautifully accented with leather, tobacco, and graphite. The beautifully concentrated and polished palate. Add a sophisticated framework and a powerful and brooding finish, and you’ve got a Cabernet bargain that rubs shoulders with wines priced 20 times higher.

Stark Condé makes the point we’ve made many times before: If you’re looking for Cabernet steals but refuse to look beyond Napa Valley, you’re closing yourself off to some of the most exciting wines in the world. Fortunately, there’s no time like the present to open your cellar to some of highest-value Cabernet on the planet. 

Today, it’s just $24. Talk about an everyday price for a 96-point Cabernet that’s the definition of extraordinary.

The seeds of Stark-Condé were sown in 1989, when Hans and Midori Schroder—who met in Japan and lived there together for 25 years—moved back to Hans’s native country. A decade later, joined by their daughter Marie and her husband José, they founded the winery on their 600-acre farm called “Oude Nektar,” taking the name from Hans’s mother’s surname, Stark, and that of Jose’s father, a hardworking Cuban émigré to the US. 

South Africa is a world away from Napa Valley, but this wine would fit right in there. It hails from the Jonkershoek Valley, South Africa’s answer to California’s Cabernet epicenter, where it was grown in high-iron red soils, not unlike what you’d find in some of Napa’s finest vineyards. And Oude Nektar’s 100 acres of grapes were planted starting in 1990, in a program that leveraged the latest soil care techniques and planting material, making it a truly prestigious place for Cabernet. 

The south-facing slopes of Oude Nektar range from 490 feet to over 1,900 feet above sea level, and are much cooler than the surrounding areas of Stellenbosch. The strong winds that wash over the vines during the summer cool down the vineyards significantly, which maximizes vine health and keeps yields low. 

In 2017, the warm and dry season produced beautifully ripe berries that were small, with superb concentration and velvety tannins. After being harvested in small crates and hand-sorted, they were fermented in open-top containers before aging in 300-liter French oak barrels, 30% of which were new.

The result is a Cabernet that stands out by fitting in with some of the priciest bottles in the world. This is why we never stop looking—because we know the outliers are out there. And we won’t rest until they’re in the hands, and in the glasses, of Wine Access members.